Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Rimfires Martini time!

A question posed here a bit ago about accurate .22's intercepted a weak brain cell and I found myself hitting "I'll take It" in the classifieds for a Martini MK-II International. If you're not familiar with these here's a pretty definitive website. Martini Internationals. This one has no fixed sights but had a neatly installed rail. I wondered why I was buying a discontinued Weaver 25X taste scope a few months ago (for a bargain!) and I guess this answered that question. I didn't weigh it but I'm betting it's up toward 16+ lbs. Not a mountain rifle. A car to the bench rifle. Lift with your legs not your back as they say. The trigger is maybe 2 ounces and has zero slack.



We had a great Labor Day weekend with CF friends Jorge's camp along with Hatari and spouses and other like-minded couples in central PA. Stunning nice weather, lots of cool guns to shoot, dead game to cook and spirits to consume. I took along 15 boxes of various .22 ammo to see what it liked. It was a bit breezy during the experiment but shot at 50 yards so not too bad. I was really surprised to find of the 5 varieties of Eley I had along that only one of them would chamber and that with great difficulty. It's the most British of rifles how is that possible?



For about $4.50 a box the SK Standard Plus and Norma Tac-22 at a bit less is my standard for shooting my Anschutz 1712 at silhouette as it's good enough. It was still "good enough" but there were a couple real standouts.



RWS Target rifle was pretty good but the real shocker was Federal HV Match 40 gr solid @ 1200fps. I have always believed, and it's been true, that slower is more accurate and at least for this 5 shot initial experiment the Federal won the shootout. Price is very reasonable so may need to acquire some more. It may be a little fast for silhouette (too hard on the targets) but I do need to see how it shoots in that rifle. For you gopher shooters I'd take a look at it.



What am I going to do with this rifle? I don't really know. Maybe benchrest but there are some folks shooting benchrest .22 silhouette at 200 yards and as long as there is no weigh limit maybe that's its right use. Maybe it's just owning a neat rifle from the 50's and seeing what its like to shoot rimfire at 200 yards. I'll certainly learn to read wind better! I put it in Burris rings with the plastic inserts so will need to adjust to get enough elevation.